"The mediocre borrow, The great steal the whole thing."
If I am going to steal a web model I need to be sure to steal the best stuff. After checking other papers' web sites (love NYT, hate SJ Mercury News) and various blogs over the past two years I have decided to steal wholesale from Gawker.
Gawker is a NY based blog, one of a family created by Nick Denton. Over the past several years, Nick has not only developed multiple blogs but has boldly experimented with different advertising models, comment models, and compensation models as well as tweaking his designs. He predicted the steep drop off in revenue, not only for the print media but for blogging media and ruthlessly disposed of under performing blogs. He cut expenses and his are a few of the sizeable blogs/web sites that are profitable.
What are some of the things I think are great about the Gawker model?
Lots of Posts - I would guess that in a 24 hour period Gawker posts about 40 items. The posts start early in the morning (west coast time) and continue until late in the evening. I check it several times a day. This is very good for page views which will drive advertising revenue.
Repeated Topics - Gawker's posts tend to be grouped into categories such as Gossip Roundup, Media Crack, Open Caption.
Good Comment Handling - to gain commenting privileges, one has to audition by submitting a "clever" comment. Once approved, you get a user name and password. If your comments are stupid, boorish or boring you can be executed. Check out the current Sentinel's online comments and tell me how many you think should be executed. (I say, kill the whole bunch and let God sort them out.)
Transparent Metrics - each post starts with a short intro; to read the rest you have to click through. This provides a metric on the "interestingness" of the post and is used to compensate the contributors.
Not Afraid of Outbound Links - check any newspaper's web site for outbound links. What? You don't find any? Hey, you gotta place nice in this business.
Natural Threading - reading a post and realize you missed an interesting earlier post or related one? Gawker's links make it quick and easy to see the entire "thread" of posts.
Clean Design - the design has been refined over time and is reasonably clean. Too many newspaper sites have so much junk, advertising and widgets that you get a headache staring at them.
Good Use of Photography - Gawker uses small photos aside many posts with a larger photo or photos inside. They always give credit where due on photos -- something the Sentinel currently does not do well at all!
If you're not familiar with Gawker go to: www.gawker.com
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